Back in Wujiang, as 7:30 PM, Chen Hu descended from upstairs with the box containing the tiger beetles, shouting to Zhang Xiaolan, "Mom, I'm going out for a walk."
Due to the good public security, Zhang Xiaolan wasn’t worried about his safety as she watched TV in the living room, just reminding him, "Don't go too far, okay?"
"Wait, why are you taking your brother's pet insects with you?" Zhang Xiaolan looked at him strangely, particularly the box.
"Oh, Big Bro called me this afternoon and asked me to release them." Chen Hu blinked.
Telling her about his brother’s absurd request to tie a rock to the box and throw it into the river would only cause her to suspect that he was up to something, so it was better to say he was going to release them instead.
"Your brother called you?" Zhang Xiaolan was shocked, then immediately concerned. "Did he say how he's doing over there? Is he okay? Is he eating well? I heard that Kyrola over there is quite backward, with the signal sometimes there and sometimes not, and there are frequent power outages..."
"Ahem! Mom, he's fine, he's doing well." Chen Hu hastily interrupted.
Without waiting for Zhang Xiaolan to speak, he ran out. "I’m going out, then!"
By now, it was almost December, and the cooler weather meant fewer pedestrians at night. Along the river road, there were only a few elderly people walking with children.
According to Chen Chu's request, Chen Hu came to the bridge by the river, took out a rope, and tied the box containing the tiger beetles to a small stone.
After testing the weight, Chen Hu suddenly threw the stone and the box into the water.
The stone quickly sank into the water, while the box, with several small holes punched in the front, floated on the surface, anchored in place by the stone.
"Is this okay?" Chen Hu looked at the floating box in the water, somewhat unsure. After thinking for a moment, he took out his phone.
Due to the time difference, it was late at night in Kyrola.
Chen Chu, however, hadn't slept at all, and answered the phone as soon as it rang.
"Bro, I threw the tiger beetles into the river."
"Yeah, I know, you can go back now."
As Chen Chu spoke, under the bridge, a three-meter-long mutated beast quietly looked up at Chen Hu from the riverbank.
"Oh, then I'll go back."
Since Chen Chu said it was okay, Chen Hu hung up the phone and left.
By the time Chen Hu had been gone for about ten minutes, it was already 8:30 PM. Under the dim bridge, the water splashed, and a huge black head emerged on the surface. It measured half a meter long and was covered with spikes, as three pairs of scarlet feathered horns flared out from the sides, giving the armored beast a feeling of inexplicable majesty.
The beast swallowed the entire box in one gulp, then disappeared into the river.
Half an hour later, the armored beast returned to the tributary, back to the bank where it had originally dug its first hiding place.
Naturally, that nest couldn’t accommodate its current size. It reached out its claws, the surrounding water becoming turbulent as it started to dig.
Soon, there was a hole below the water's surface, a passage leading up five meters, and a huge cave with a length and width of six meters dug out inside.
It wasn't until then that the armored beast curled up in the middle and lay down, biting down on the wooden box it had been holding in its mouth for a long time.
At the same time, on the hotel rooftop, Chen Chu issued a mental command: Evolve.
Chen Chu's thought was like pressing a button. Thousands of kilometers away, a tsunami of scorching torrent erupted from within the armored beast.
This time, the accumulated evolutionary energy was much greater than the previous two times. Wherever it went within the armored beast, muscles, bones, and even its outer armor visibly decomposed at an alarming rate, all the way down to the cellular level, as those cells reorganized, split, compressed, and gained a significant increase in density.
The originally stable genes, after absorbing the genetic factors for speed from the tiger beetles, began to reorganize and optimize, evolving towards an even stronger form.
At the same time, a scorching energy appeared out of nowhere inside Chen Chu's body, erupting like a bomb and engulfing his entire body in a rolling wave of heat.
As a heavier aura emanated from Chen Chu’s body and his muscles and bones became denser, his already impressive strength grew at a terrifying speed, increasing by one time, two times, five times...
This evolution took longer than the previous one, and it was almost two hours before it was completed. By now, the sky was already bright, the sun rising in the east, and the golden sunlight fell on Chen Chu's face, which was radiating a lustrous glow like carved jade.
He slowly opened his eyes, and for just an instant, his eyes gleamed with a hint of gold and a sense of noble godliness, his gaze cold and indifferent.
Chen Chu moved his body slightly, sensing how extremely heavy it had become. His skin was tougher, the explosive power of his muscle fibers was stronger, and his bones were harder than alloy, capable of bearing even greater force.
"This is a major improvement." Astonished, Chen Chu summoned the attribute page with a single thought.
Realm: Third Heavenly Realm
Ability: Soul Splitting+
Arts: Lotus Platform Meditation Art, Dragon Elephant Art+ [Third Stage], Insightful Blade+ [Third Stage]
Equipment: Ordinary battle armor [Durability +10]
Avatar: Six-horned Sword Armored Beast
Level: Middle-level mutated beast [A beast that possesses three powerful abilities. Among mutated beasts of the same level, it is considered a king, with extremely strong combat power]
Ability: Strength+ [Hundredfold Strength Explosion], Defense+ [Hundredfold Pressure Defense]
Agility+ [Special body structure and elastic joints in limbs, can instantly burst into a movement speed increased by thirty times. Note: effect is lessened in water]
Evolution Points: 0/3000
From this evolution, Chen Chu's four major attributes had increased by a total of 100 points, and the overall comprehensive enhancement was mind boggling. At this point, he felt that even without true power, ordinary bullets would not be able to penetrate his skin due to how incredibly dense it had become, and his growth in strength was even more terrifying.
Chen Chu grabbed the huge water tank rack on the rooftop. With only a slight exertion, the ten ton metal rack emitted a squeaking sound as it was deformed.
Feeling the power bursting out of his arm muscles, Chen Chu relaxed his palm with satisfaction. "This is just my base arm strength, and I've already exceeded four thousand kilograms now."
The higher the Physique attribute became, the greater effect each point gain gave. In this case, the increase between two hundred points of strength and three hundred points was almost doubled.
After that test, Chen Chu's attention fell on the avatar data below. The name had changed to Six-horned Sword Armored Beast, and it was now a middle-level mutated beast, a classification different from what humans used for mutated beasts.
Chen Chu felt that the current Sword Beast's level among mutated beasts was most likely around the beginning stage of the Fourth Heavenly Realm. Taking into account the previous low-level classification, it seemed that the attribute page divided mutated beasts into three categories: low, middle, and high, corresponding to the nine Realms.
Even though the Sword Beast was technically at the beginning stage of level 4, the note about it being a king beast meant that its evolved combat power far exceeded its own level.
Once he finished looking over that information, he looked down to the third ability, “Agility.”
By building up energy, the Sword Beast could burst into a movement speed thirty times its basic speed in an instant. Chen Chu was a little surprised by this; he had been expecting the ability to have a hundredfold increase like the others.
He pondered for a moment. "It seems that even abilities are subject to air resistance and gravity."
The Strength ability came from the powerful muscle fibers and hard bones throughout the body, and the Defense ability came from the special structure of the hard exoskeleton, the power of both being determined solely by the state of the Sword Beast’s body.
But speed seemed to be different. While its power mainly came from the ability to build up energy and the terrifying elasticity of the joints, it would still be affected by external factors during the burst.
Or perhaps it was because the source of power for this ability came from the body itself, so it was still subject to physical limitations.
If the source of power for this speed ability was derived from transcendent energy, rather than the body itself, it could potentially transcend the laws of physics.